MOSCOW, July 08. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is expected to make a working visit to Slovenia Tuesday for meetings with the Adriatic nation’s top leadership, the Foreign Ministry said in a press release.

He will also participate in the ceremony of opening a memorial museum at the site of the former Nazi concentration camp in Maribor where many Soviet POWs died.

The itinerary of his visit includes talks with Acting Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Karl Erjavec, as well as with President Borut Pahor, the Mayor of Maribor, and public activists of the city.

“The forthcoming negotiations will fall in line with the intensively developing trustworthy Russian-Slovene political dialogue,” the Foreign Ministry’s press release said.

Russian-Slovene relations, which the two countries established in 1992, have always been marked by an atmosphere of friendship and positive dynamics. “They acquired a multi-vector character and the spirit of partnership underpinned by extensive content.”

“The sides will discuss a broad scope of pressing international issues and opportunities for deepening the Russian-Slovene collaboration in various organizations and in the in the first place at the United Nations,” the press release said.

“Being a member-state of the European and the North-Atlantic pact, Slovenia speaks for development of a strategic partnership between these organizations and Russia,” the ministry said. “There will be a detailed discussion of the crisis in Ukraine and the situation in the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and of the situation around the Iranian nuclear program.”

In addition to it, Sergei Lavrov and his Slovene hosts will discuss bilateral trade, since Russia is one of Slovenia’s leading trade partners, with Slovene companies working in more than sixty regions of Russia.

Bilateral trade grew 6.2% in 2013 compared with 2012 and reached $ 1.66 billion. The encouraging tendency was also registered in the first quarter of 2014, as the trade turnover grew 6.8% versus the same period of the previous year.

Improvements in the structure of trade remain an important task for the two countries, which hope to raise the share of high-tech products in the turnover.

Russia attaches significance to assuring a greater presence of Russian investors in Slovenia, including through the privatizations of state property there. Moscow in its turn stresses its openness for Slovene investors.

Effectuation of the South Stream pipeline project on Slovenia’s territory is called upon to increase the volumes of mutual investments and in this context the Russian and Slovene governments have a common goal, which is to tap the solutions enabling the countries participating in the South Stream to act properly on their obligations under international agreements without violating the EU legal norms and regulations, the press service said.